Abaddon's Gate

“I just—”

“But it doesn’t matter, because if she has even half a brain—and I suspect she has a lot more than that—she’ll be busily hiding herself. And she’s not from here. We need an insider.”

“Sam,” Naomi said, just as Holden was thinking the same name. “She’s chief engineer on this boat. No one will know it like she does.”

“Does she owe you any favors?” Holden asked.

Naomi gave him a sour look and pulled his hand terminal off his belt. “No. I owe her about a thousand,” she said as she opened a co

She laid the terminal on the bed with the speaker on. The triple beep of an unanswered voice request sounding once a second. Alex and Amos were staring at it intensely, eyes wide. As though it were a bomb that might go off at any moment. In a way, Holden thought, it was. They were about as helpless right now as he could ever remember them being. Holden found himself wishing that Miller would appear and fix everything with alien magic.

“Yo,” a voice said from the terminal. “Knuckles.”

At some point over the last year, Sam had given Naomi the nickname Knuckles. Holden had never been able to figure out why, and Naomi had never offered to explain.

“Sammy,” Naomi replied, the relief in her voice obvious. “We really, really need your help.”

“Fu

“We were calling you to find a hiding spot,” Amos yelled out. “If you were calling us for the same thing, you’re fucked.”

“No, that’s a good idea. I’ve got a spot you can hole up for a while, and I’ll come meet you there. Knuckles, you’ll have the layout in just a second. Just follow the map. I’ll be there as soon as I can. You kids take care of yourselves.”

“You do the same, Sammy,” Naomi said, then killed the co

“You get to navigate,” Holden said to her, then added, “Can everyone walk?”

Amos and Alex both nodded, but Naomi said, “Alex’s skull is being held together with glue right now. If he gets dizzy and falls, he’s not getting up again.”

“Now XO,” Alex objected. “I can—”

“Naomi can’t walk,” Amos said. “So you put her on a rolling bed with Alex and push them. I’ll take point. Gimme that map.”

Holden didn’t argue. He picked Naomi up from her bed, trying to jostle her as little as possible, then set her next to Alex on his. “Why am I pushing instead of walking point?”

“He broke his left arm,” Naomi said, scooting as close to Alex as possible and then securing the lap restraint across them both. When Amos began to protest she added, “And all the ribs on his left side.”

“Right,” Holden said, grabbing the push bars at the head of the bed and kicking off the wheel locks. “Lead the way.”

Amos led them through the makeshift hospital corridors, smiling at everyone he passed, moving with an easy stride that made him look like a man with a destination but no hurry to get there. Even the armed patrol they passed barely gave him a glance. When they looked curiously at Holden, pushing two injured people on the same bed, he said, “Two to a bed now. That’s how crowded we’re getting.” They just nodded him past, their expressions both sullen and bored.

Holden hadn’t had much chance to look around the rest of the hospital. After leaving the docks he’d hurried straight to his crew’s room and hadn’t left since. But now, as he moved through the halls and intersections toward the exit, he had a chance to look over the full extent of the damage the catastrophic speed limit change had caused.

Every bed in every room was filled with injured people, and sometimes the benches and chairs in the waiting areas. Most of the injuries were contusions or broken bones, but some were more severe. He saw more than one amputation, and quite a few people hanging in traction with serious spinal injuries. But more than the physical damage, there was the stu

Someone with a doctor’s uniform watched Holden push the bed past, his eyes following their progress, but exhaustion robbing him of curiosity. From a small room to his right, Holden heard the electric popping sound of a cauterizing gun, and the smell of cooking meat filled the air.

“This is horrifying,” he whispered to Naomi. She nodded but said nothing.

“None of us shoulda come here,” Alex said.

Doors and corners, Miller had warned him. The places where you got killed if you weren’t paying attention. Where the ambushes happened. Could have been a little more explicit, Holden thought, and then imagined Miller shrugging apologetically and bursting into a cloud of blue gnats.

Amos, half a dozen meters ahead, came to a four-way junction in the corridor and turned right. Before Holden could cross half the distance to the turn, a pair of OPA goons walked into the intersection from the left.

They paused, looking over Naomi and Alex snuggled up in the rolling bed. One of them smirked and half turned to his companion. Holden could almost hear the joke he was about to make about two people to a bed. In preparation, he smiled and readied a laugh. But before the jokester could speak, his companion said, “That’s James Holden.”

Everything after that happened quickly.

The pair of OPA thugs scrambled to get at the shotguns slung over their shoulders. Holden shoved the rolling gurney into their thighs, knocking them back, and gave the corridor a frantic glance looking for a weapon. One of the thugs managed to fumble his shotgun down off his shoulder and rack it, but Naomi scooted forward on the bed and drove her heel into his groin. His partner stepped back, finished getting his hands on his shotgun, and pointed it at her. Holden started to run forward, knowing he was too slow, knowing he’d watch Naomi blown apart long before he could reach the gunman.

Then both gunmen turned toward each other and slammed their faces together. They slumped to the floor, guns falling from nerveless fingers. Amos stood behind them, grimacing and massaging his left shoulder.

“Sorry, Cap,” he said. “Got a little too far ahead there.”

Holden leaned against the corridor wall, legs barely able to support him even in the light gravity. “No apologies. Nice save.” He nodded toward the shoulder that Amos continued to rub with a pained look. “Thought that was broken.”

Amos snorted. “It didn’t fall off. Plenty left in here for a couple of idiots like this.” He bent down and stripped the two fallen men of their weapons and ammunition. A nurse walked up behind Holden, a plastic case in her hands and a question on her face.

“Nothing to see here,” Holden said. “We’ll be gone in a minute.”

She pointed at a nearby door. “Supply closet. No one will notice them in there for a while.” Then she turned and went back the way she came.

“You have a fan,” Naomi said from the bed.

“Not everyone in the OPA hates us,” Holden replied, moving around the gurney to help Amos drag the unconscious men into the closet. “We did good work for them for over a year. People know that.”

Amos handed Holden a compact black pistol and a pair of extra magazines. Holden tucked the gun into the waistband of his pants and pulled his shirt down over it. Amos did the same with a second gun, then put the two shotguns onto the gurney next to Naomi and covered them with the sheet.

“We don’t want to get in a gunfight,” Holden warned Amos as they began moving again.